Spanish holiday home roadshow 'an insult'
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 @ 11:16 AM
A publicity roadshow aimed at encouraging foreigners to buy Spanish holiday homes has been branded "an insult" by groups of Britons caught in legal difficulties over the status and funding of their properties on the Costas.
Spanish housing minister, Beatriz Corredor, and public works minister, José Blanco, visit Britain this week at the start of a six-nation tour. The Spanish authorities said the ministers will use the roadshow to encourage individuals and institutional investors to buy some of the estimated 1m new homes lying empty in Spain.
"We must revive the holiday housing market to speed up the 'digestion of stock'," said a Spanish government spokesman, while Blanco claimed the exercise will "highlight the strengths of our economy [and] transparency and legal certainty of our planning legislation".
However, protest bodies such as the Spanish Bank Guarantees Petition and the Finca Parcs Action Group are organising online petitions calling for the roadshow to instead address long-standing grievances on the alleged refusal of Spanish banks to honour aval bancario, or bank guarantees.
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